This panel was once part of the altarpiece decorating the high altar of the Carthusian monastery at Thuison, outside of Abbeville in northern France. Four saints standing in niches were painted on the exterior of the altarpiece’s wings. When the wings were open, the interior of the altarpiece told the story of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection through painted narratives on the inside of the wings and painted and gilded carvings in the central shrine whose central subject was undoubtedly the Crucifixion. The carvings have not survived. The fronts and backs of the wings were sawn apart in the mid 19th century; all the wing panels except one narrative (The Entry into Jerusalem, Hermitage, Saint Petersburg) are in the Art Institute.

A rich border region north of Paris, Picardy was a possession of the Burgundian Netherlands in the mid-15th century, becoming part of France in 1477. Its painters were strongly influenced by artists from the neighboring provinces of the Low Countries, among them Rogier van der Weyden and Simon Marmion.

Ownership History

Church of the Carthusian monastery of Saint-Honoré, Thuison-les -Abbeville; sold before the church was demolished in 1796, probably in 1790–91 [It is not known when the retable structure was sold or dismembered. The charterhouse was demolished in 1796 after its suppression in1790; Prarond 1871–84, vol. 2, pp. 527, 536–37, 547, 551–52]; purchased directly or at second hand by the Abbé Louis-Victor Cauchy (d. 1828), then curate of Saint-Sepulchre, Abbeville [Delignières 1898, p. 31]; passed at his death to an unknown inhabitant of Abbeville [Delignières 1898, p. 31]; convent of the Ursulines, Abbeville, 1873 [according to Corblet 1873, 1874.]; acquired by Émile Delignières, Abbeville, probably by 1898 Delignières 1898]; Edmond Soyez, Amiens, between 1902 and 1904 [lent to Paris 1904]; Eugène Kraemer, Paris; sold, Georges Petit Galleries, Paris, June 2, 1913, nos. 17–23, to Kleinberger, Paris; sold to Martin A. Ryerson (d. 1932), Chicago, June 27, 1913 [Kleinberger stock card, Department of European Paintings, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Ryerson paid 105,000 fr. for the panels; receipt, Oct. 27, 1913, Art Institute Archives.]; bequeathed to the AIC, 1933.